Emilia Pérez

 

Jacques Audiard's extraordinary genre-busting and award-winning Emilia Pérez might become the nexus for Hollywood's renewed reflection on questions of gender / sexual identity in light of Trump's executive order establishing only two genders in the U.S.

This reflection will be more fraught for those living comfortably in a binary world but that's not to say the questions have been fully resolved in communities accepting of gender / sexual fluidity. It's this fluidity that is the central thread coursing through the film, which is as bold in its execution as it is in its premise.

Karla Sofía Gascón, a transwoman, plays the title character in the film, whom we first meet as a male Mexican drug lord named Manitas. Manitas is married to Jessi (Selena Gomez) and is the doting father of two boys. Unknown to his family, he has been undergoing hormone treatments in preparation for a full transition to female.

Manitas contacts unappreciated Mexico City attorney Rita (Zoe Saldaña) and hires her to be his agent in the search for a reassignment surgeon. He's offering to pay her millions, which would free her from the thankless job of pursuing justice in a system that is as corrupt as the drug cartels themselves.

She accepts and identifies a surgeon in Tel Aviv (Mark Ivanir). Rita also plans the relocation of Manitas' family to Switzerland because he will fake his own death and never see them again.

Several years after the transition, Manitas, now Emilia, meets Rita at a party, makes herself known and asks her to help move Jessi and the boys back to Mexico to live with her, as she assumes the identity of Manitas' wealthy cousin.

Thus begins the core intrigue of the film, which blends conventional narrative with musical numbers, several large-scaled elaborately staged production. How long will the deception last? Will secrets and confidences hold?

This uncertainty grows more pressing as Emilia takes on the cause of finding some of the thousands of people who had been kidnapped, killed and buried all over the country. Emilia is on a high-profile mission (seeking redemption?) to uncover the truth, even as she shields her past and the role she played in these horrors.

We would not be wrong to anticipate disaster awaits, but Audiard's film is not a disaster. In fact, it is a triumph. A daring, bold vision about social and individual truths that won’t change anyone's mind on the matter of gender / sexual identity but that's no matter.

It's not so much about societal acceptance, anyway. As Selena Gomez sings at one point in the film, English translation:

I want to love myself

Love, yes, my life

Love, yes, what I feel

I want to love myself

Love myself fully

Love myself just as I am.